From Digital Inequality to Astronomic Possibilities

"The process of developing an information society should take place at all levels of the power and the society and first of all at local levels," noted Tver Region Governor Dmitry Zelenin, opening the Tver Forum. Plenary sessions, thematic sections and practical workshops took place during the forum.
At the section "Application of ICT for life safety of the population" the experts shared their experience of working with web-services and materials of operational space monitoring to resolve the tasks of monitoring, response and mitigation of risks of emergencies.

In 2010 satellite images and imagery data products were used during the activities of the Russian Emercom rescuers in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, damaged after a series of earthquakes; during the monitoring of the emergency oil spill at the ESPO pipeline near the town of Lensk (Russia) and in other emergencies. This spring the results of the operational space imagery were used for monitoring of floods on the Russian rivers. Spring-summer fire season has also been backed up by the prompt satellite imagery.

The necessity to increase the information level in the works of ministries, enterprises and organisations and in the activities of the society as a whole was marked out by the country leaders and politicians. During the Presidential Counsel on the development of the information society, which took place in Tver on 8th July Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appealed to pass from words about the benefits of the information technologies to their practical application.

Over 50 companies presented practical developments and their application results during the Tver Forum: IBM corporation, "M2M Telematics", "Next Tehnika" Scientific and Technical Laboratory, "TT Systems", "Prognoz" (Forecast), "Integrated Medical Information Systems", "MB" Scientific and Production Company, "Insoft" Engineering and Introduction Center, etc.

ScanEx Research and Development Center deployed the outdoor exhibition during the Forum, demonstrating possibilities of the "LAN" mobile complex for reception and processing of Earth observation data from space. The mobile complex was developed by the ScanEx Center specialists based on the small-size universal "UniScan" complex that starting 2000 has been successfully introduced and operated on in Russia, CIS countries, Asia, Europe and the USA. Automatically tuned to receive data from a lot of remote sensing satellites the UniScan antenna system stirred up true interest of the Tver Forum participants, who were later on truly surprised at the level of the national technology developments in sphere of space imaging. In their turn, the specialists applying Earth observation images and derived data products wondered how fast the space monitoring (imaging) of different territories and processes can be done nowadays.

The time interval between the satellite data acquisition and the "ready-to-go" product generation based on ScanEx technology is now reduced to 30-40 minutes. This enables to efficiently handle the RS data in different areas: forest fires monitoring or maritime oil spills. Affordability of space technologies aimed at the democratization of access to space images is equally important.

Numerous geo-portal projects created based on GeoMixer technology using API of the Kosmosnimki.Ru resource stirred up a special interest of the Tver Forum participants. In addition to different thematic services and projects the Forum presented 3D visualization technologies of Kosmosnimki.Ru portal for the first time, as well as the possibility of the "tree-by-tree" forest fund inventory.

Nonetheless, the pace of introduction of new information technologies, including those using remote sensing, within Russian regions is still topical. The problems of the "digital inequality in Russia" are at the bottom of this issue. Once this inequality is removed this can foster the development of the information society in the country.

"An information society is first of all the society, built on knowledge and information,"said Russian Minister of Communications Igor Schyogolev at the Tver Forum. "This is a highly intelligent environment, ready to change, to create and to promote innovations."

According to the Tver Forum results the highly intelligent environment is already ready to change, to create and to introduce competitive and efficient innovations. The scale and amplitude of new technology innovations and resources application is still an important task on the state level.